I am collecting "all" the hall of famers from one set in each decade. t205, e120, 33 goudey, 41 playball are my prewar sets.
I also embarked upon a pre-war type collection a few months ago.
It took me a while to decide how to approach it. I ended up using oldcardboard.com as a reference to create my "list".
I suspect there will be many different personal definitions of "main pre-war set". If you just start looking at pre-war cards, you'll see a few sets that are alot more available than others. Maybe those are the "main sets"? Depending on your budget, you may add "affordable" into your definition.
I have a spreadsheet with the sets listed on oldcard. It includes year, acc designation, number of cards in set, their estimated value of a common, set name. The cool thing about the spreadsheet is: the set name has hyper text so when you click on the set name, it takes you to the appropriate page on oldcardboard.
My guess is that you can look at the set size and the value of a common on that spreadsheet and make a pretty good start on picking some representative sets.
If you want a copy, let me know by email and I'll be glad to send it to you.
Tony
|